The present invention relates to equipment for dispensing a beverage; and more particularly to apparatus for automatically filling a container of a specified size by controlling the amount of beverage which flows through a spout.
Restaurants and taverns frequently dispense beverages such as soft drinks and beer from a tap. Conventional taps have a lever operated valve in which a server manually operates the lever to fill a glass or pitcher with the beverage. Such manual operation requires that the server monitor the flow of beverage from the tap once the valve is opened so that the container is properly filled but does not overflow.
Some establishments have automatic beverage dispensers in which the server merely pushes a button and the proper amount of beverage is dispensed into the container from a spout. The beverages commonly are sold in a number of different size beverage containers and the dispenser has a corresponding number of buttons with a different button being pushed to dispense beverage into a particular size container. With such an automatic system, the server no longer has to monitor the dispensing operation, but can perform other tasks while the container is being filled. This is particularly advantageous when a relatively large volume container, such as a pitcher, is being filled.
In automatic systems, the amount of beverage which flows through the dispenser for a given size container is controlled by opening the valve for a particular time interval with different time intervals being used for the different size containers. Such a method assumes that the beverage will flow at a relatively uniform flow rate from one pour to the next. However, the flow rate at any given time can be affected by a number of variable factors, such as temperature, pressurization of the beverage source and the viscosity of the beverage.
In such an automatic dispenser, a mechanism must be provided for individually setting the duration of the pour for each size container. One such automatic dispensing device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,900,136 in which separate timing devices are provided for each different sized container with a potentiometer used to set an interval for each timer. U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,643 discloses a computer controlled beverage dispenser in which different pour times for each container size are stored in a memory. These pour times are determined by manually dispensing beverage into each sized container while timing the interval that it takes to properly fill that container. In both of these automatic systems, the proper time interval for each size container must be determined by actually pouring beverage into that container while either adjusting a potentiometer or measuring the manual pour time for each container. Such a method is both time consuming and wasteful of beverage since the beverage during calibration may have to be discarded.